


The Marauders versus Minerva McGonagall

by lazarwolff



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Animagus, Gen, Hogwarts, Just lots of McGonagall love, Magic Lessons, Marauders' Era, More characters to be added, Teaching
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-07 11:11:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11057739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarwolff/pseuds/lazarwolff
Summary: Sirius Black picks the wrong day to listen in class. For Professor McGonagall, it's going to be a long five years.





	1. Chapter 1

Sirius Black could be so sophisticated, so underhandedly polite, it was difficult to remember that he was a child. Minerva was still no good at disciplining students. It hadn’t been especially long ago that she was a student here; sixteen had been the zenith of adulthood and the teachers impossibly old. Now, she was a teacher and she wielded power over Sirius Black, who despite causing every kind of trouble, never started anything in her class and was always very kind to her. Minerva sometimes couldn’t help but feel it was pity which prevented him from being harder to manage.

But in the halls of Hogwarts, he was an unmitigated terror, something akin to a natural disaster. Minerva hoped she would never be passing by when Black turned Severus Snape’s scarf into something wriggling and angry, or when he decided to traverse the staircases with a Comet 67 enchanted to fly indoors. She would have to be stern, if she did meet him in one of these frequent moments of anarchy. She would have to take points from Gryffindor, or give him detention while his friend Potter was playing against Ravenclaw this weekend.

And then, Sirius Black would stop pitying her and start treating Transfiguration like all his other classes. A lark, a place to showboat in front of his friends and remind the teachers that he could leave whenever he wanted.

Minerva was not ready for the eye of Sauron to be turned on her, to borrow a reference from the Muggles.

(She’d read the books on the behest of an incredulous roommate in Muggle teaching college. It had taken her a weekend and a couple discreet twists of the Time Turner to finish, and now she couldn’t unsee Headmaster Dumbledore as Tom Bombadil.)

They were studying Animagi. It was a subject close to her heart, and turning into Greymalkin was an easy path to respect among Ravenclaws and the brainier Gryffindors. When she transformed back, to stunned applause, she saw Sirius Black considering her with rare focus. Unnerved, she turned to the blackboard and started scrawling neat notes.

“An Animagus has control over transformation, like a Metamorphmagus,” she said. “Unlike a Metamorphmagus, however, Animagi have just one changed form, and they do not choose it. I was not expecting that I would be a cat, for instance.”

“Perhaps it’s for the best, Professor,” Remus Lupin said. He was looking peakier than usual, as he did during a new moon, but he was in class and awake. This month must have been good to him. “I imagine some Animagi might have more troublesome forms, like insects or fish.”

“Yes, it would be quite a nasty shock to turn into a goldfish on land,” Minerva said. “There have been a great many incidents where prospective Animagi were not prepared for such an eventuality, and died or became grievously injured as a result. Safety is the main reason such a transformation is intensely regulated by the Ministry for Magic. With trained witnesses and proper preparation, even an Animagus whose changed form is very vulnerable can be safely guided back to human form. Now, with this in mind, why might someone choose to become an Animagus?”

“For fun,” Simons said. Minerva shrugged and wrote it on the board

“To be hidden?” Pettigrew suggested.

“Before the British regulations, that was very feasible for Animagi,” Minerva said. “For instance, there is the famous case of Belinda Benson at the turn of the century. As a lizard, she posed as her younger sister’s exotic pet for many years while she dodged unwanted suitors. However, now it would be very difficult to be unrecognized in a changed form. Animagi are registered and their names and forms are posted publicly. You can find me on that list.”

“But that assumes that every Animagus is registered,” said Black, and Minerva paused.

“That’s right,” she conceded. “Given the risks, which are well-known and documented, unregistered Animagi are speculated to be few and far-between.”

“Speculated?”

“The unregistered ones are by their very nature unquantified, Mr. Black,” Minerva said. “It is only a very powerful magic-user who can even make the transformation, so that narrows down the list of those who would break the law so they could have a secret animal form.”

“What’s the punishment, if you’re caught?” Black said.

“I imagine there is a fine or even a stint in Azkaban, Mr. Black,” Minerva said, lips pursing. “However, I am not a professor of civics. Perhaps Professor Binns can satisfy your curiosity on the particulars of wizarding law and restricted magics. May I return to my lesson?”

“Sorry, Professor,” Black said with that polite and guileless smile. Minerva resisted smiling back, and turned to the blackboard to write notes on theory.

After class, Minerva gathered the rolls of parchment about last week’s lesson on multiplication spells. Black’s was half the size of parchment she had asked for. She sighed, and put them in her book for marking. Professor Vector had given her a very good charm to decipher students’ handwriting, and she was eager to try it over a pint at the Three Broomsticks.

“You look tense,” Rosmerta said, and set down a little glass of something. Muggle whiskey, Minerva realized with some pleasure. She found the magicked effects of wizarding alcohol to be tiresome sometimes, and especially when she just needed a drink. Rosmerta was the rare bartender in their world who had the wisdom to keep reserves of Muggle spirits.

“Grading papers,” Minerva said. “Multiplication spells. And the practical is supposed to be next week, but if any of them don’t demonstrate the proper understanding in these, I have to reschedule.”

“Multiplication, eh? Watch this,” Rosmerta said, and pointed at the whiskey with her wand. It turned from a single to a double. Minerva smiled. “Well, professor, do I pass?”

“With flying colours,” Minerva said, and raised her glass in a toast to the marvelous bartender.


	2. Chapter 2

“All three of you,” Remus said with a skeptical wrinkle of his brow. “You want to learn how to become an Animagus. You don’t even know how to Apparate yet! What do you suppose cross-species splinching might be like?”

They were discussing Sirius Black’s latest plan over a box of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans. Peter had purchased them on a whim and then hadn’t touched them because the risk/reward dichotomy was too great for him. Remus had gathered all the suspected raspberry-flavour beans, and was slowly weeding out the blood-flavoured ones, which were a sure avenue to werewolf sense memories. James had only taken blue ones, the only colour guaranteed to be a pleasant flavour. And Sirius had a handful of all different flavours, because he could deal with anything that sadist Bertie Bott could throw at him.

Remus wondered if one’s method of eating Every Flavour Beans was indicative of character.

“We’re going to do it,” Sirius said. “James, Peter and I. You said yourself, when you’re having your furry problem, you’ve never gone after an animal.”

“That I can recall,” Remus emphasized. “Sirius, Professor MacGonagall spent that entire lesson expounding on the legal issues and the dangers of becoming an Animagus. What if one of you were to turn into an invertebrate?”

“Like a squid,” Peter said, eyes widening. The Giant Squid horrified him beyond reason.

“Or single cell organism,” Lupin said. “We don’t know what’s possible.”

“So we find out. There’s books,” James said. He was busy buffing his broomstick for the match against Ravenclaw next weekend, but his eyes twinkled. “Loads of books.”

“Yes,” Lupin said, “All three of you will learn how to displace, then conserve, the entirety of your bodies’ mass into animal forms by reading a book. That sounds easy! Why is this kind of magic restricted in the first place?”

Remus was getting a special kind of lunar headache, the kind which was only triggered by his best friends’ shenanigans, and in retrospect were not caused by the moon. Such headaches often made him short.

“Come off it, Remus,” James said.

“No,” Sirius said, eyes narrowing. “Moony’s right. Books aren’t the answer.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Remus said.

“We have to be taught. McGonagall has to teach us,” Sirius concluded with a bright smile.

“Godric’s balls, Sirius,” James said.

“It’s illegal,” Peter said. “She’s a teacher!”

“You don’t think teachers do illegal things now and then?” Sirius said. “It’s so we can help you, Remus. She likes you.”

“I don’t think teachers do illegal things now and then,” Remus said. “Because you make it sound like teachers commit crimes as frequently as they might sneak a cigarette.”

“You have a different view of adults than I do, Remus,” Sirius said. There was an awkward little silence as they remembered what it was, exactly, that the Black family spent its time doing.

“Fair,” Remus conceded.

“But you’re also right,” Sirius continued, and popped a brown bean into his mouth, a dangerous prospect. “McGonagall’s by the books. So we have to get her to teach us without her really knowing.”

“How would that go?” James asked. “Obliviating a teacher?”

“No,” Sirius said, and spat out the bean he’d chewed onto the grass. “We’ll use an elaborate plan. That’s how Muggles get what they want.”

“Um,” Remus said. “As the only one here who knows any Muggles, they don’t use elaborate plans nearly as much as all those films I’ve made you watch have led you to believe.”

“Bollocks,” James said. “Truly?”

“I’m afraid so,” Remus said. “They prefer to ask one another for things.”

“And when that doesn’t work?” Sirius said. “How do all of them get along without at least a little mind control?”

“I don’t know, Sirius,” Remus said, grimacing as he bit into a blood-flavoured bean. “I guess they learn to live without for the most part.”

“How irritating,” Sirius said. “All right, here’s my plan; we read all the books we can on the subject of Animagi. Once we have the theory, and understand it, we ask Professor McGonagall to turn into a cat again. We really watch how she does it, and then we try.”

“I feel like you’re missing a couple steps in there, mate,” James said.

“Yes!” Remus said, throwing up his hands.

“It couldn’t be simpler,” Sirius insisted. “We’ll just need to work at it.”

“Having a go at it couldn’t hurt,” James said, brow furrowing. “I suppose if any of us really mess up, Madam Pomfrey can fix us and we’ll promise not to do it again. Peter, do you think you can try?”

“What are you all looking at me for?” Peter said, though he still looked frightened at the prospect of turning into a squid. “I’ll give it a try, same as all of you.”

“Then it’s settled,” Sirius said. “We’ll hit the library later.”

“You’re all going to get killed,” Remus said with a groan. “But I can’t stop you.”

“That’s the spirit,” Sirius said with a smile. “Cheer up, Remus, soon the three of us will be in the Shrieking Shack with you.”

Sirius had a strange quality; when you looked at him, it seemed everything he wanted would happen. The future was written by Sirius Black.


	3. Chapter 3

The Muggle Studies classroom had a projector and a screen. The projector worked on an intermittent basis because of what magic could do to electricity. Minerva, however, had invented a spell which transfigured electricity to magic for the duration of a film. Though, judging by the amount of reels for the new one which was a gift from her Muggle uncle last Christmas, she wouldn’t be able to watch all of it on her free period anyway.

She’d loved the first one, watched it a few times in a London cinema over the summer. And Muggle papers were already heralding the sequel as better. She put the first reel of _The Godfather Part Two_ into the projector, and got ready for a quiet evening.

She forgot about how loud guns were in Muggle movies, but that was enjoyable too, like fireworks. At the end of the first two reels, she got up to rearrange the room for future classes. Then she heard a soft but strongly felt ‘blimey.’

“Is that you, Black?” Minerva said, startled. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for a wireless,” Sirius said, with a hound dog look at his shoes. “There’s a football game I’m keen to catch.”

“Do your parents know that you listen to the radio?” Minerva asked. Sirius smiled mischievously.

“It infuriates them,” he said. “But they need their pots to be stirred sometimes. If wizarding supremacy can be unscrewed by the lightbulb or football, then what’s the point? That’s what I think.”

Minerva thought that an angry House of Black was probably quite dangerous for a child, even a child like Sirius. But it was rather funny to think of old Orion Black having a conniption over a football match on the wireless.

“Let’s find you your radio,” she said, Accioed the wireless from the jumble of cables and wires on a nearby shelf. She handed it to Sirius and then took on a stern tone. “But I hope you understand that this is a loan. You are to return it when you’re finished.”

“What on earth is that?” Sirius asked, pointing to the blank projection screen.

“Why, it’s a film projector.”

“I know what those are,” Sirius said patiently. “I meant the film. Fantastic! Best one I’ve ever seen.”

“How many have you watched?” Minerva asked.

“Three,” Sirius said. “ _Fantasia_ , the one with the Beatles – they’re not really beetles, I was young enough to be surprised – and _The Italian Job_. Remus makes me watch cartoons sometimes, you know his dad’s a Muggle. I think those are brilliant! No magic at all! You know, wizards would never animate something, they just make a drawing move.”

“Well, that is animation of a kind,” Minerva said.

“Yeah, but the work involved isn’t comparable. Part of what makes the Muggle cartoons so good is the work,” Sirius said. “Even if they could make something move by pressing a button or pulling a lever, they would still plan it and work on it until it was the best possible thing. Wizards, well, most of us don’t care a jot. We think magic makes the best thing right away, but that isn’t quite true. It can’t be, or we wouldn’t go to school to be better wizards, and we wouldn’t have to practice.”

“Fascinating, Mr. Black,” Minerva said, cracking a mischievous smile of her own. “Two years you’ve been at Hogwarts, and I’ve never seen such a respect for the value of education reflected in your schoolwork.”

“Well,” Sirius said, smile slipping off his face. “It’s different for me, isn’t it?”

“How so?” Minerva said.

Sirius shrugged.

“It just is,” he said. “I could be the best or the worst in my House, but I’ll be doing the same thing once I leave here.”

“And what do you suppose that might be?” Minerva asked. Sirius took his bag and left.

\--

“Was that meant to be a gambit, Sirius?” James asked as Sirius imparted the entire awkward exchange in the dormitory that night. Remus was at the Astronomy tower, doing a study of Jupiter, and so the other three had the room to themselves.

“Sure,” Sirius said. “It’s advantageous for McGonagall to feel sorry for me. It’s just a matter of time before she guides as through the Animagus process.”

“Nice sarcasm,” James said with a huff.

“Well, how did the library go?”

“Peter and I went to the Restricted Section,” James said, with a roll of his eyes. “It was a mistake to bring Peter—“

“Hey!” Peter said, with the indignation of someone who definitely found the Restricted Section’s infamous screaming books.

“-- but he wanted to be involved. I have a couple of interesting books, I think.”

“Let’s see,” Sirius said.

_Animal Bodies, Human Souls_ had the most horrifying pictures, and _The Practical Application of Transfiguration on the Human Body_ had the most impenetrable text. This was going to take a while, as well as a very serious application of their combined brains. Sirius took out a notebook, and flipped to a blank page. Wizarding shortcuts like notes which wrote themselves and Auto-skimming the text wouldn’t do here; it was time to work like a Muggle.

“Did you know that Animagi run the most risk of turning inside-out than any other kind of wizard?” James said, having flipped to a random page in _Animal Bodies, Human Souls_. 

“Great Merlin, intestines everywhere! How much intestine does one person need?”

“We’re not turning inside out, Potter,” Sirius said as Peter turned green. “That’s only what happens to stupid wizards.”

“Point taken,” James said.

When Remus came back from Astronomy, he found his friends blinking blearily at restricted books, quills behind their ears.

“Hello Remus, how was school?” Sirius asked.

“Very interesting. The moon is beautiful when it isn’t turning me into a nightmare monster,” Remus said. “I can’t wait until I don’t have to take Astronomy.”

“You just don’t like it because you’re not good at it,” Sirius muttered, jotting down a note.

“Well, yes,” Remus said. “Though the ever-present fear of mauling a teacher is a large factor as well.”

“Could you imagine?” James said with a chuckle. “What a coup that would be.”

“A coup?” Remus repeated. “James…”

“A joke, mate. I wouldn’t sick you on anyone,” James said.

“How reassuring,” Remus said. “So, how have Animagus studies gone?”

“Well,” Sirius said. “There’s a couple of tests we can take before we try to change into animals. It’s clever, really. If we can cast these spells properly against a control, then there’s a high chance we won’t hurt ourselves on the big day.”

“Where does it say that?” Peter said, frowning at his book.

“It doesn’t. But look, statistically a successful Animagus can cast all these spells. And, if we ask for help with these, it won’t draw as much suspicion as asking about what we really want to do,” Sirius said. “It follows that if we can do these, then we have the abilities required for the Animagus spell.”

“That is clever, Sirius,” James said. “I mean, some of these spells are actually on our curriculum. We just need to go to Charms and Transfiguration and practice there. Totally legitimate, and not suspicious at all.”

“So you’re going to attend class, be diligent, and practice coursework?” Remus said. “Not suspicious at all.”

“God, I’m a genius!” Sirius said. “Acknowledge my geniosity, Remus.”

“We’ll see,” Remus said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The Potters took Sirius to see Fantasia one Christmas when James and Sirius were children.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr here- https://hogwartsfortheholidays.tumblr.com/


End file.
